


Review

by rageprufrock



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:39:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pillars always survive what they support.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Review

As in all other things, Fuji is an infuriatingly quick study, finding first interest, then mastery, and eventual boredom.  For that fact precisely, Tezuka's own research in the field is lazy, nearly leisurely, done without concern or a worry for eventual testing.

Just before Tezuka leaves, Fuji asks, "Have you considered us?"

 ****

 *****

 

Germany draws by in a blur of hardened consonant sounds both unfamiliar and familiar enough to the complicated English sounds of words for Tezuka to be confused to annoyance.

There are parties and fascinated girls, who touch the fringe of his sun-streaked hair, black mixed with coarse browns and reds from long hours on the courts.

They run their hands along his thin, muscled arms and comment on how he looks older than he is, and if he'd like to go out with them: dancing, drinking, one of them kisses him, presses him into the corner of a wall and pushes her clever pink tongue into his mouth, which is somehow more confusing than the language, and as sweet as summer.

He doesn't drink, Tezuka explains, but they tell him that's Japanese Tezuka, and he's in Germany now.  This means he's a whole different person, they explain, and tug him from his room in the Institute, drag him down the hallways laughing, tossing their golden and brown hair and flashing their blue and brown eyes.  They say, "Tezuka -- " because it's easier than 'Kunimitsu' to pronounce " -- come with us.  Come with us!"

So they press their generous pink lips to him and they play practice rounds, tease laugher out of him and fill him with sweet, cherry-flavored lager, until he is as sweet to kiss as he is to look at, they say, and Tezuka lets it all run through him like water, and doesn't think about Fuji and his studious gaze at all.

It is remarkably easy, there are many things to look at in Germany.  There are museums and busy streets, bright lights and dark evenings, race tracks and cars --  _fast_  cars.

Tezuka's father used to take him to car shows when he was younger, he'd point at the chrome rims and smile approvingly at the leather upholstery, and jabber for hours about how fast one car went and how well they cornered.  Tezuka thought about tennis instead.

Now, on tracks and with the indulgent smile of one physical therapist or the other, he drives in circles, going so fast he thinks that he can see the universe melting around him, as if he is moving so quickly the world is forced into reverse.

And sometimes before he manages to make the car stop, he thinks he sees Fuji, golden-washed and standing in the shade of one of the green trees near the tennis courts, smiling and holding out his hand.

The words Fuji says are always lost in the sound of the engine. 

Or maybe, Tezuka's trying not to hear.

 ****

 *****

 

When Tezuka was learning to drive, in the first months he was in Germany, Wilhelm, Dr. Langley's Wednesday afternoon, sat in the driver's side seat and talked indulgently about driving like it was a religious experience.  "When you go fast," he'd said in stilting English, "it's flying."

Tezuka will remember near-flying.  It's harder to go fast in Japan, he'd attempted to explain then.  There's a lot of traffic and not a lot of empty road, cars move with synchronized lights, it's easier to go on public transport.  Not everybody even knows how to drive.

It's different at home, Tezuka thinks, staring at his ceiling, and home is an eventuality.

There will not always be speeds approaching one hundred and thirty kilometers an hour, or miles of pavement waiting.

There will not always be so much space.

 ****

 *****

 

Tezuka bullies Oishi over the phone on a bi-weekly basis. 

When Oishi asks him how Tezuka can be so completely pedantic about one singular event, Tezuka comments that he'd leave Oishi alone -- if he'd agree to be captain.  Their conversations always end in an amused truce.

He works hard at recovering, but it's a frustrating balance.  Too little has never been a problem for Tezuka, it's always a matter of pushing too hard.  The doctors and therapists tell him to take his time, that healing will come if he is patient and faithful, steadfast.  Tezuka wants to tell them that if nothing else, he has always been these three things.  They are required personality traits for managing a team of middle school students, essential for maintaining some kind of upper hand with Fuji Syuusuke.

The doctors tell him that things are going well, and when Tezuka asks why they are going so slowly, they raise their eyebrows at him and ask him if he remembers how he managed to damage himself so badly.  Tezuka is rarely shamed into silence, but he's all too aware of how uncomfortable it is now.  It seems stupid to try to explain that he was attempting to make a point.

"I wanted someone to become a pillar," he could say.

"Of a middle school tennis team?" they would throw back.  "You nearly ruined your arm forever."

Tezuka is beginning to think that this is a trade he should not have considered or carried through.

But doubting leads only to long nights where he stares at the ceilings and wonders if the entire concept of questioning oneself is a Western one. 

In Japan, answers seemed as concrete as the lines of his father's glassy office building.  Here, where there is more green than technology sprawled around Tezuka thinks only about the lack of straight lines in nature, the lack of perfect right angles or absolutes: perhaps his determination was unnatural.  It's easier to second-guess when there is no one who needs him to know for sure.

The bi-weekly calls become less and less bi-weekly, and one day Tezuka is surprised to find a concerned email from Oishi saying that it has been three weeks since their last conversation.

Tezuka writes back to say that things have been busy, that he is fine, and that Seigaku is to stay strong until the Nationals.

It is the last thing he can believe in, and his only option. 

The whole world is shattering apart at his feet in a slow symphony and Tezuka is only now picking up the notes.

 ****

 *****

 

When Nationals roll around, his doctors frown at him, and glare, as if he is a difficult patient.

His father initially balks at the idea of a plane ticket for the sole purpose of watching a tennis game, but his mother interrupts the conversation midway to say that Tezuka doesn't need to listen to his father.  He hadn't planned to, anyway, and zipped up his already-packed suitcase as he ended the phone call.

So Tezuka flies to Japan for the tournament and comes back worse for it.

As promised, he doesn't play a single game but comes home destroyed.

He spins out on the track and barely misses a wall, for a moment there are no certainties and the entire universe is a hot, angry blur through the windshield.  It's nice, in a freefalling, frightening sort of way: to have no answers as opposed to guesses.  The tires stop with a sickening shriek of protesting rubber against the asphalt, and when he crawls out of the car it's to lay on the pavement -- still hot from his wheels -- and gasp for oxygen, wondering where all of it went suddenly. 

The sunlight and the time difference combine to form a dreamlike state, and Tezuka sees Fuji, singles-one, playing a game where he really means it for maybe the first time in his entire life.  It is like a letter, with full intent, dictated silently and written on Tezuka's skin.

Only now it's not enough.

By the time he gets back to his room at the Institute all he sees are the worn green courts behind Seigaku, and how small they really are.  It was easy to make himself forget about how shabby the locker room and equipment shed were, and build the tennis team up to an impossible standard, but Tezuka sees now, in a liquor-haze of clarity that he made a bad decision.  That it wasn't worth it.

It's hard to care about Seigaku or winning the Nationals or Echizen when he hasn't played a  _real_ game of tennis in six months.  When it hurts to move his arm on rainy days, the moisture is heavy in the air.  When he wanders around Germany and misses Japan so terribly it sinks into the marrow of his bones, and becomes an inescapable ache, deep and intoxicating.

 ****

 *****

 

He skips physical therapy the next day and walks around Leipzig.

Tezuka is starting to see what's so attractive about teen apathy.  There is a glorious freedom in irresponsibility.

Sasha from Group meets up with him just outside the University compound, and Tezuka walks with her and lets her talk in broken Japanese and very fast German.  They sort of understand each other but mostly don't, and Tezuka's all right with that.  It's a kind of relationship he has a lot of experience with.

"Tea ceremony," she asks suddenly.  " _Chado_.  Did you do this?"

Tezuka blinks, and says, "Yes.  Once.  Long ago."

She frowns.  "You should.  Before Germany."  This is only half-way in either language, with a preposition in English.  Living here is going to be hell on Tezuka's grammar -- all of it.

Sasha spends the next twenty minutes trying to pantomime some reason why Tezuka should have drunk powdered green tea before he came to Germany, and in the end she is so flustered and annoyed that Tezuka is completely incapable of hiding the smirk that steals across his face.  She throws a balled-up napkin at his head, which he catches, and she beams, like it's a sign.

She tells him that there is a jazz music festival next week.

"Miles Davis," she says solemnly, and Tezuka nods.

Some things are universal.

 ****

 *****

 

Tezuka's nurse is a short, compact woman with dyed-brown hair who speaks fluent Japanese.  She tells him to call her "Haru," but he thinks this is mostly because his early attempts to pronounce her name -- Hildegard -- only ended in hilarity on her part and frustration on his own.

She likes to tell him that sometimes, he needs to remember that he's only fifteen years old.  Tezuka likes to ask what that has to do with anything.

"Nobody knows what they want at fifteen," she lectures him.

Tezuka's automatic desire is to say, "I do," but he bites his tongue, and she smiles approvingly at him before going on to chatter about her family and children, her ordinary life.

One day, for no reason Tezuka is able to fathom, he asks, "Did you ever do anything you regretted?"

She looks at him for a long time, studying him.  "Is this a competition?"

Tezuka blinks, his mouth falls open before he realizes that he's really got nothing to say to that, and she just smiles and says, "Everybody regrets things, Tezuka.  It's part of being alive."

"Not a good part," he murmurs, and flushes when as it registers he's said this out loud.

"No," she agrees after a beat.  "But it's essential."

She finishes poking and prodding him in silence.

 ****

 *****

 

Tezuka goes to the jazz festival, and sees Sasha at one of the stages.  Her eyes light up and she waves as she runs over, once again talking very fast, but her voice is drowned out by the music and less seems confusing or grammatically unknowable when there is Miles Davis playing in the background, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, and all the greats. 

Sasha says these names with a thick German accent that makes all the sounds rough and consonant, while Tezuka says them with a Japanese one that makes them disjointed, discontinuous.  But neither of them is in the mood for a debate in the relative merits of their pronunciation so Tezuka doesn't bother, and they buy bottles of water and wander around.

They lean against large, leafy trees and Sasha closes her eyes, bobbing her head to the music. 

Tezuka finds her interesting, in a detached sort of way.  Vaguely, Sasha looks like Fuji: blue eyes and a smile, with light brown hair that is messy and long, boyish.  Sasha has thin arms and legs and a birdlike neck, curving and white like the rest of her skin; Tezuka can hardly believe she's an athlete.

Somewhere beneath the experimental trills and looping notes in jazz music, Tezuka hears the barest roots in classical music, and he wonders if Sasha can feel them, too, the dropping notes that are as familiar as Mozart and foreign as Louis Armstrong.

They leave while the music is still playing loud and happy in the air, and walk through the blue-pink twilight back toward the Institute.

Tezuka realizes that his four-star Japanese education left something seriously to be desired when Sasha kisses him lightly on the mouth, and tells him thank you for the date.

He is halfway through composing a near-panicked email to Oishi with undignified questions about dating when he realizes that the only person on the team who knows less about women than he does is his vice captain.

Tezuka spends the night staring at his ceiling, dividing his time between being furious with himself and Kikumaru. 

He wakes up the next morning bleary.  He looks for his racquet and his tennis balls only to find that there is a thin layer of dust on both.

 ****

 *****

 

Tezuka's grandfather once said that Tezuka favored his father in every way but for his mother's sense of humor.  Tezuka was conflicted as to whether that had been a compliment or a reproach until he'd met Fuji -- who reminded Tezuka entirely too much of his own mother -- and decided his grandfather was being unjustly harsh.

But it is Tezuka's streak of sadism, he thinks, that makes him write the email to Fuji, who is the only other person on the team he trusts enough to ask about these things, which incidentally puts Fuji in a position to be the only other person on the team who might care about it at all.

Two days later, Fuji replies, and Tezuka can nearly read the smile between the lines: it is dangerous, cold, and angry, sharp enough to slice, and this gives Tezuka a perverse sort of satisfaction in which he indulges because he is in Germany, and there are no consequences.

Fuji tells Tezuka that Tezuka has always been the school's number one ranked potential boyfriend, and that the members of his fanclub have taken to wearing black armbands in mourning.  Tezuka knows better than to ask why they know about whatever they seem to know about, and accepts it when Fuji writes that Inui triple-checked his calculations, and came up ninety-six point four three six (guaranteed to two significant digits) that Sasha has irregularly high levels of affection, based upon the scant information provided.

Part of Tezuka realizes that this is all indicative of the fact that he is steadily and surely losing his mind, as he is in Germany and Inui is in Japan, making math out of Tezuka's crisis.

There is a flurry of emails from various members of the team, and Tezuka finally realizes that whatever bouts of humiliation he's suffered in the past are nothing compared to this.  He is debating whether or not to keep a tally, a running log, of how many laps to assign to each person, and then spends five minutes seriously considering calling Oishi with a  _list_ , before he checks his email later that evening to find Oishi curious as well.

At the very end of the day, Fuji sends along a one line message:

"How did she taste?"

For no reason Tezuka can decipher, this makes him more furious than Kikumaru.

Just before he falls asleep that night, Tezuka realizes he has not thought about Nationals since the jazz festival -- that his last, faintest memory of tennis and Seigaku and pillars floated off with the sweet, trembling notes of something played over the speakers, fading into nothingness.

 ****

 *****

 

In some fundamental way, Tezuka knows that there is something that he's just not telling himself.  It's easier not to think about it, better not to know; there are things he'll have to do when he's older, and promises he's made that he intends to keep. 

Tezuka's not entirely sure why it's so important.

With the physical therapy comes a mandated once a week appointment with a German man who speaks flawless Japanese, because only the best will do, and Tezuka's father the corporate warrior spared no expense.  They talk about Tezuka's tennis games, what Tezuka wants to do with his life, where he would like to go to college, what he'd like to do there.

"You're talking about Sasha a lot," Dr. Fleiss says. 

Tezuka imagines that this is a relative quantity.  In sessions, mostly, Tezuka just stares at the wall behind Dr. Fleiss' head while they listen to one another breathe.

"What do you think of her?" the doctor goes on to ask.

Tezuka tenses in his seat, imperceptible, he hopes.

"She's very intelligent," Tezuka compromises after searching for the right words.  "She likes to hear about Japan."

Dr. Fleiss nods and looks at him considering.  "But what do  _you_  think  _of_  her?"

Tezuka stares at a spot on the wall just past Dr. Fleiss' shoulder, and doesn't speak for nearly five minutes before he says, as calmly as he can, "I think she is fond of me."

When Dr. Fleiss actually laughs at this, it's enough to make Tezuka's eyes widen in surprise.  But Dr. Fleiss just waves away Tezuka's faintly-astonished expression and set away his notepad, leaning back in his chair, folding his old hands in his lap.

"Tezuka," the doctor says, "do you understand that therapy is a two way street?"

"I didn't want therapy," Tezuka says simply.

Dr. Fleiss looks at him for a long time before smiling softly.  "Of course not."

"I don't want Sasha, either," Tezuka adds, without any reason.

Dr. Fleiss only raises one eyebrow without letting it express anything and says, "Oh?"

"I'm doing this so that I can keep playing tennis," Tezuka says finally.

"Is that your personal goal?" Dr. Fleiss adds, leaning back in his seat indulgently, like he is watching a wayward child. 

Tezuka was never a wayward child; Fuji used to joke that he wasn't sure Tezuka was ever a child at all.  Tezuka knows better, he's seen photographs of himself flushed and nude out of the tub, laughing and crying, wearing pink and blue clothes with hoods that had animal ears on them.  He is as human as the rest of the team, and carrying the weight meant for a pillar is exhausting, unending, suffocating.

"My personal goal is to lead Seigaku to victory," Tezuka says.  He sounds strangely muted.

The pen Dr. Fleiss is holding is set away next to the notepad abandoned earlier, and this makes Tezuka's shoulders release, like there will be no evidence of this conversation now.

"What about later?" Dr. Fleiss asks.  "What about in college?  What about after?"

These are the same questions Dr. Fleiss asks every time, but they seem very different now that Tezuka is thinking about them after Seigaku.  It is as if before, college and After were separate entities, running parallel to Seigaku and the tennis team, with brief moments of covalent bonding as Tezuka realized shallowly that they would exist at some point or another.

And these are answers Tezuka does not know, because what will he do at TouDai?  Where will he go then?  When there are no tennis courts to reign over and laps to assign?

"You told me once that you asked a boy on your team to be the pillar of Seigaku," Dr. Fleiss says lightly.  "Pillars usually survive what they are holding up."  He cocks his head.  "What will you do when there's nothing above you?"

Tezuka says, "I have to leave now.  I'll be late."

Dr. Fleiss only smiles and agrees, wishing Tezuka a nice day.

When Tezuka gets back to his room at the institute, he writes back to Fuji, saying, "I don't know.  I'm never going to kiss her."

 ****

 *****

 

Tezuka blames his current frustration on Dr. Fleiss, and scrolls through page after page of Roman history, seeing pictures of dilapidated temples and marble pillars with gorgons and monsters and a world of history and battle carved into the soft flesh of the stone.  Tezuka thinks about the way that life writes on a person, how if he looks at his body in the mirror he can see his entire life in scars and the lines of his collar bone, the curve of his chest, the cut of his hip.

He strokes his hand hesitantly across his stomach, and feels the lines of his stomach hard against his fingertips, and wonders why he has a perfectly flat belly and only one real friend.

It seems, suddenly, as if his priorities in life have always been slightly skewed in exactly the wrong direction.

 ****

 *****

 

His mother calls one Saturday morning and he holds the phone away from his ear because he's got a hangover-induced headache.  He's forgotten somewhere in his many months away from home that he does not drink.  He's sixteen now, taller still and broader, not quite so thin and slick from tennis and sun.  German is starting to sound normal to his ears--contrary to the alto-smoothness of his mother's cursive tongue.

"You sound sick, Kunimitsu-san," his mother says, gently, her voice rolling over the vowels the way that Fuji's does, polite and detached and too close, claustrophobic.

"I have a headache," he admits, lying back in his bed, squinting at his ceiling.

She makes an agreeable noise before she murmurs, "Happy birthday.  Did you have a party?"

There's no point lying to his mother, so he closes his eyes and says, "Yes."

She laughs, and it sounds happy, lighthearted and young.  "I think you're getting younger."

"What time is it in Japan?" Tezuka asks, more to emphasize what time it is in Germany than out of any real curiosity--throbbing head or no, he can subtract and add.

His mother just tells him to take care of himself, to be careful that he sleeps well and doesn't put too much pressure on himself.  She doesn't remind him to keep studying for his college entrance exams, and she doesn't ask him if he misses home.  She sends him her quiet, subversive affection and he says goodbye in a perfectly polite way.

"You'll be home in four weeks," she reminds him gently.

Tezuka murmurs something in agreement and they hang up.

He holds the phone to his ear for a long time, listening to the tone echo, thinking of pillars and Greece and ruins, the last, lingering memories of many, many things.

 ****

 *****

 

The last week of physical therapy is mostly endurance exercises which leaves Tezuka panting and exhilarated, heart racing and hopeful.  At this particular moment, watching the satisfied expression on his physical therapist's face, feeling the ache in his limbs and the sweat on his skin, the furthest thing from Tezuka's mind is Seigaku.

He can feel every muscle in his body ache when he plays on the courts just outside the institute and it is glorious.  It's better than living up to his parents' expectations or his grandfather's hopes or leading Seigaku to victory.  It's better than being a regular and it is better than Fuji when he is quiet and calm, somehow important in Tezuka's heart.

This may be, Tezuka realizes, what passion feels like, and how foolish of him, to have lived in it and not recognized its trappings for so long.

It comes like a rush like tides or an ocean or first love, a sudden, vertigo-inducing realization that makes Tezuka hot all over in a flush that terrifies and uplifts him.  He is not a vector, just a boy, and he can love what he does, and owe it to nobody otherwise. 

He doesn't care right then, he realizes with bewildered shock, if Seigaku wins.  He doesn't care if the tennis club should disband.  If nobody else on the team ever played tennis again--Tezuka would be content because  _he can_.

This is the most remarkable realization in the world.  This is what Dr. Fleiss was talking about.

Tezuka, he thinks, is only Tezuka.

He doesn't have to be anybody to anyone, nor any particular place at any particular time.  He's sixteen years old and he's been walking around thinking that he knew what he wanted out of his life for so many years that he almost let it get away from him.

 ****

 *****

 

Now that he has this valuable information, the question is what to  _do_  with it.

Should he jump ship, abandon the team, or any of a number of other privately-thrilling things, Tezuka is a little concerned that several terrible things would happen in quick succession, not the least of which involves Fuji showing up at his home.  There's also the possibility that his grandfather may have a stroke, which would be problematic.

Tezuka hoards this realization and puzzles over it for days.

In the end, Tezuka figures that he's trying to plan for the forest instead of individual trees, so he reflects on how to approach his father, his grandfather, his mother (who probably knew about this years in advance just never felt obligated to inform Tezuka), and team members who would notice that something was different.

He imagines that liberal amounts of bending the truth may be necessary in some cases--this would be easier if he were any good at lying.

 ****

 *****

 

He arrives back in Japan on a Thursday and it is raining.  The sky is gray and warning overhead, and his mother and father and grandfather are all glad to have him home.  Tezuka sleeps for what feels like thirteen hours straight and over a groggy lunch the next day, both male influences in his life raise their eyebrows at him; his mother smiles.

Tezuka's still too much himself to put off going to school, and despite the fact that he seems to be sleeping through his classes with his eyes open, he forces himself through a full week.

Tennis practices have been canceled for the exam period, but Oishi informs Tezuka that there is to be a celebration for his return at Kawamura's sushi-ya.  When Tezuka arrives, the party is already in full swing, and Ryoma spends most of the night at his side, looking as starry-eyed as Ryoma ever looks.  When somebody offers him a beer and Tezuka actually drinks it, the only person who doesn't stare is Fuji.

"This is surprising," Oishi finally says.

"I'm told I'm full of them," Tezuka says back dryly.

Tezuka sees Fuji's eyes, considering and blue and half-lidded, watching him from the corner.

There is a flush at that, too, not dissimilar to one he had in Germany.

 ****

 *****

 

"So you're home," Fuji says, much later, when the night is inky above them and the other team members have disappeared and it's only he and Tezuka, standing outside a Lawsons.

"I'm home," Tezuka agrees.

"Have you thought about what I said?" Fuji asks far too lightly.

Tezuka struggles to answer this question, but says the only thing he really can, "No.  But I've thought about myself."

Tezuka is only Tezuka and the only thing that will really change is how he thinks, but perhaps that alone is enough.

Fuji smiles, and it's brilliant.  "How fascinating."


End file.
